Investigation of color and turbidity in the clarification of sugarcane juice by ozone

摘要

The sugar-energy industries are highlighted in Brazil for exercising fundamental roles in the economy, being responsible for the production of products and by-products considered essential in the daily life of a society, such as sugar, alcohol and energy. One of the processes used in the production of sugar is the clarification of sugar by sulfur. Due to the high toxicity of sulfur and its derivatives, harmful to both the human and the environment, there is a great and constant concern in reducing the consumption and emissions of these compounds. Seeking a method of clarification of sugarcane juice that uses less harmful clarifying agents and provides less loss of sugars, the present work investigated how ozonation affects certain parameters of the sugarcane juice, which are turbidity and color (International Commission for Uniform Methods of Sugar Analysis). In the experiment, the samples were divided into two lots and submitted to ozonation with ozone generation rates of 13, 17, and 21 mg O-3/min, temperatures of 30, 60, and 90 degrees C and duration of 0, 30, and 60 min. A complete factorial design with three factors was used, in three equidistant levels (3(3)), totaling 27 samples for each lot. The experiments were performed randomly, submitted to analysis of variance using the STATISTICA software. The results presented in this work are better than those obtained in real situations and similar to others in experimental situation by ozonation; when compared with traditional methods of clarification, our results are at least equal to them.